Writing about painting is almost impossible for me. It seems counterproductive right now, in the middle of making paintings, which is what I do instead of talking.

However, I like what Dadaist Francis Picabia wrote:

"We must create by ourselves: such a phenomenon, the extraordinary: the extraordinary can be compared only to the person painting, since the extraordinary is far from the common, from the vulgar, or the banal: so what we are painting with the automatism of becoming is no longer just the eternal deformation, the eternal imperfection.

As an aesthetic phenomenon, existence is unbearable. But through art, the extraordinary offers us a rest from life, and it is this protection that gives us a rest from our own selves.

We must therefore rejoice in our madness, which hides the passion for the extraordinary.

The extraordinary is always joyous, and a long way from our sensibleness."

Nancy Rebal

May 2006